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Forecasting land cover change impacts on drinking water treatment costs in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Citation:
Woznicki, S. AND J. Wickham. Forecasting land cover change impacts on drinking water treatment costs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2017 AGU Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, December 11 - 15, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
This research provides a case-study for the EnviroAtlas while filling a knowledge gap in drinking water source protection by developing a modeling framework using an ecosystem goods and services approach and land cover change forecasting. The research is centered on an EnviroAtlas community (Minneapolis, MN), with an engaged community partner (Minneapolis Drinking Water Treatment) and local stakeholders. The community partner and local stakeholders are concerned with land cover change in their source watershed and its potential impact on water quality and drinking water treatment. They need EPA ORD expertise in developing a modeling framework to aid their future planning and decision-making processes at the treatment plant scale and landscape scale. Community participation is a key component of this research: the drinking water treatment plant and local stakeholders provide data (e.g. drinking water treatment chemical usage and costs) and direction (e.g. expertise on local conditions and concerns). This research is an opportunity to use EnviroAtlas data to aid the decision-making process at the community and watershed levels, while collaborating with the community to define the research goals to better fit their needs.
Description:
Source protection is a critical aspect of drinking water treatment. The benefits of protecting source water quality in reducing drinking water treatment costs are clear. However, forecasting the impacts of environmental change on source water quality and its potential to influence future treatment processes is lacking. The drinking water treatment plant in Minneapolis, MN has recognized that land cover change threatens water quality in their source watershed, the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). Over 1,000 km2 of forests, wetlands, and grasslands in the UMRB were lost to agriculture from 2008-2013. This trend, coupled with a projected population increase of one million people in Minnesota by 2030, concerns drinking water treatment plant operators in Minneapolis with respect to meeting future demand for clean water in the UMRB. The objective of this study is to relate land cover change (forest and wetland loss, agricultural expansion, urbanization) to changes in treatment costs for the Minneapolis, MN drinking water utility. To do this, we first developed a framework to determine the relationship between land cover change and water quality in the context of recent historical changes and projected future changes in land cover. Next we coupled a watershed model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to projections of land cover change from the FOREcasting SCEnarios of Land-use Change (FORE-SCE) model for the mid-21st century. Using historical Minneapolis drinking water treatment data (chemical usage and costs), source water quality in the UMRB was linked to changes in treatment requirements as a function of projected future land cover change. These analyses will quantify the value of natural landscapes in protecting drinking water quality and future treatment processes requirements. In addition, our study provides the Minneapolis drinking water utility with information critical to their planning and capital improvement process.
